Foreign Cinema reminds me of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Especially, the Inferno: you enter from Mission Street, which is dark, full of sinners and sins. At the outset you feel insecure. And then there is a door and you must pass through Purgatory, down a long narrow, grey hallway. Two little chapels with flowers on the side.  As though in a nave. And at the end of that endless hallway, a beautiful angel, Beatrice, the ideal woman:  a hostess with a smile and a question: Do you have a reservation? To heaven? Yes, of course, I have a reservation.

And here it is; an oyster bar, a movie theater, a beguiling dining hall with a fireplace and Modernism art gallery. Heaven, here I come! And a very happening place. Busy yet serene, waiters dancing their efficient dance to serve the guests. To make you fell like nobility. Your eyes wander up to the clouds, where the open sky movie theater is. And then the movies take your imagination to other places. Only the food is earthly, and divine.

And here are the masters of this drama, my dear friends,  the chefs, the couple that decide and provide: Gayle Pirie and John Clark.

Salute!